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EDITORIAL Clean, green and 100% KIWI PURE? BY SANDRA GORTER ow much is a marketing campaign worth? Something big enough to get you into every country in the world so that when people from Outer Mongolia hear about you they immediately recognise your campaign? Something big enough to give you access to the dinner tables of international jet-setters with hundreds of millions, billions even, at their disposal? Now we���re talking, you know the campaign I���m talking about, you���ve seen it with pages of images on google earth. True? Yeah right! But riding on the back of the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, boy is it effective. So in December, in New Zealand���s largest newspaper, we read a story out of the US that says we should be genetically modifying our salmon. It could ���grow twice as fast as normal��� we hear��� But! Oh how sad. It can only happen if the poor hard-pressed company proposing genetically modi���ed salmon can stay a���oat. Well b��� me, we should, just trash that expensive marketing campaign we���ve all been riding on, and start again so we can get one company who wants to genetically modify their ���sh off the ground. What is it that our marketing gurus have been telling us for years? New Zealand is such a small country that we can���t compete in high volume, low return markets. I suppose Fonterra is an exception, but its the exception that proves the rule. No. For salmon, seafood and most of the rest of what this country produces, we have to go for the high-end, niche market if we���re going to make enough margin for a New Zealand enterprise to survive. Taint that marketing image with the riff raff of low-end production practices and you���re stuffed. We���re just too small to compete against companies with the marketing dollars and clout of the mass market: that we���re always going to be minnows in a world of great white pointers. Don���t even go down that road, you���ll be eaten alive. So what do we do when we hear the sad story of the H US company that was about to become the world���s ���rst to sell ���sh whose DNA had been altered to speed up growth? Apparently the FDA had initially OK���d the salmon, but now they���re delaying giving their ���nal OK. The CEO of US company Aquabounty tells us through this New Zealand media outlet that, ���We only have enough money to survive until January 2013��� the unexplained delay has made.. (it).. very dif���cult.��� Makes you want to cry into your beer doesn���t it? New Zealand���s salmon, seafood, wine, dairy, beef, sheep, tourism, and just about every other market, gets a very nice ride on the coat-tails of the 100% Pure campaign thank you very much. Apart from anything else, isn���t it more rewarding, isn���t there more job satisfaction in being able to boast that your product is amongst the best in the world? Well. The drug companies and so forth are going to work to get us buying their products and buying into their practices ��� literally.You can expect a whole lot more than this in the media about the virtues of genetic modi���cation in the years to come, and it will probably be on the back of a message about ���food safety��� and securing food for the world to buy so that af���uent nations can continue scraping half their kids dinners down the wastemaster (but let���s not go there). So be prepared for a battle: you can get your hanky out and cry a few bucketfuls for the hard-done guy waiting for FDA approval for his genetically modi���ed salmon, or you can look after that New Zealand-government-paid-for marketing campaign that cost most of us nothing, but is the marketing backbone of our top-end, niche-market, quality driven industry. Or, we could see what our chances are ���ghting as minnows amongst the sharks of the world of cheap mass production. Your choice. SO BE PREPARED FOR A BATTLE: YOU CAN GET YOUR HANKY OUT AND CRY SUBSCRIBE NOW TO Name ________________________________________________________________________________ ISSUE 50 ��� NOVEMBER/D ECEMBER Address _____________________________________________________________________________ ��� $30.00 ___________________________________________________________ Postal code ______________ for 6 issues Email _______________________________________________________________________________ ��� Enclose a cheque for ________________ ��� Visa/Mastercard (only) _______________________ Card Number _________________________________________________________________________ Card Name __________________________________________________________________________ Signature __________________________________________________________ Expiry date ������/������ $5.00 GST No: 68-684-757 GEODUCK ON THE HORIZ ON Post to: VIP Publications Ltd, 4 Prince Regent Drive, Half Moon Bay, Manukau, 2012 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013 2012 PEARLS SCALLOP SPOF AT ��� CHALLEN FOR NORW GES EGIAN AQUACULTU RE FROM MUSSE L HATCH TO FLAT OYS ERY TERS THE INDEPE NDENT VOI CE OF NEW ZEALAN D AQUACULTU RE NZ AQUACULTURE ��� 3